The First Step
by teaspice
Summary: After Amon takes away her bending, Lin finds the strength to survive. Implied Tokka.


She can't stay conscious. Not when Amon touches her. Not when he takes her bending away from her. For an instant, under the implacable weight of his hand, she's a living, breathing wound, a haemorrhage. There is a terrible blackness clawing at her bones, an awfulness too big for her skin. She doesn't know how to stop herself from drowning.

_This will kill me,_ thinks Lin. _I can't possibly survive this._

She collapses to the ground. She can feel the rain on her skin, mingling with the blood oozing from the gash on her forehead. Salt and iron. She hears footsteps. The world feels muted around her, hushed as the grave. But inside she's running too fast, her lungs aching for air, her veins burning like fire. _I can't,_ she thinks again. _I can't,_ _I can't - _

- and lets consciousness slip away from her.

Lying on the ground, beaten and broken, Lin Bei Fong begins to dream.

She dreams as the Equalists leave here there to the cold and the rain and a slow kind of death, her forehead steadily seeping blood against the earth. (Earth she can't feel, earth that won't sing for her touch. Not anymore.) She dreams of her childhood home: of the garden that was more rubble than flowers, with a playhouse made of rocks that Toph and Lin had put together and broken apart a dozen times during Lin's childhood. She dreams of her mother's proud smile – the way she once clutched Lin's shoulders as she grinned. _You're strong, kiddo,_ she said. _Us Bei Fongs, we're the greatest earthbenders around. _

But Lin's not strong. Not anymore.

She dreams of stumbling through that garden, feeling the silent earth beneath her feet and the sun on her face as she walks and walks, and tries not to scream in fury. Her mother – everything she once shared with her mother has been tainted. All the skills her mother taught her, all the power she gave her, the sense of belonging and pride – it's all gone, gone. Lin can't be her mother's daughter anymore. The garden is all ashes and sand beneath her feet. The memories burn. She may as well stop walking; she may as well let go.

Then she dreams of her father.

In her dream he's alive; alive and gloriously young, still a man in his early thirties with years ahead of him – the father of her childhood. He's standing in the garden with the sun on his back, veiling him in soft shadow. He's smiling. She can see the blue of his eyes, the warm brown of his skin, the slight creases at the corners of his wide mouth. It strikes her, not for the first time, how like him she is in the ways that people always to notice – in the high arch of her cheekbones, in the shape of her chin.

"Lin," he says.

He holds out his arms to her: his strong, sinewy arms that always had room for her in them. She throws herself into his arms like she used to when she was a small girl, when she was still young enough not to worry about looking like a fool. He smells like he used to, like smoke and ocean salt – how strange, that she can still remember his smell. It's his scent that lets her breathe again, that eases some of the awful hollowness beating its wings in her heart. He's here. She's safe for now.

"Little Lin," he says, voice full of wonderment. "You're all grown up. When did that happen, huh?"

"A long time ago," says Lin. She holds him tighter. "I'm glad you're here," she tells him.

He laughs. "I'm glad I'm here too," he says. He wavers, the light flickering through him. Just a dream. He touches a hand to her cheek. "What happened to you, sweetheart?"

Lin swallows hard.

Her father. Her father who read her stories, and taught her how to fight, and mediated between her and Toph when they fought (which was often). She needed her father here – needed to remember his strength, his kindness, the way he led people by sheer force of madcap charm and bravery. Not an ounce of bending in him.

Lin has never been anything like her father. She's never had to be.

"Nothing I can't survive," Lin says quietly, feeling him drift apart under her hands. His strength fills her, as cool and clear as the sea.

Lin wakes up, her body one giant screaming ache. She's shivering from shock and from the rain. But her heart feels steady and strong, and her mind is gloriously bright.

_I am my mother's daughter, _she thinks_. I am my father's daughter._

_I will not break. _

She breathes in, deep and slow. The rain is pouring over her face, and she has so much to do. She has an Avatar to find, a war to fight. A city to save.

Lin takes the first step in the long, long battle ahead of her:

She stands up.


End file.
